Reading is your business. Reading is our business. Reading is everyone’s business.
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Libraries are having trouble getting ebooks from the largest publishing companies. The ebooks for libraries campaign is a grassroots advocacy initiative to give ebook readers the ability to communicate their needs directly with major publishers. These publishers are adding restrictions and price increases, or simply not selling ebooks to libraries at all:
- Penguin recently ended ebook lending to public libraries.
- HarperCollins has a 26-checkout limit on each ebook … and then the library has to buy it again.
- Random House allows unrestricted access, but just tripled its prices.
- Macmillan, Simon & Schuster and Hachette don’t sell ebooks to libraries at all.
This means that library customers can get a print copy of a book from a library, but can’t get that same book in an ebook format. But that’s not what our customers want. Our customers are readers – and our readers want books, in all formats, from libraries.
Here’s how you can get involved:
- Visit ebooksforlibraries.com and learn more about the problems surrounding access to ebooks at your public library.
- Get readers to sign the petition telling publishers that readers want books, in all formats from their libraries.
- Once we hit 10,000 signatures, we will mail the petition to publishers.
- We want to communicate directly with publishers through this petition process, with the intent of establishing formal and consistent communication between publishers and readers.
- Our ultimate goal is simple – get books, in all formats, to our readers. This helps authors, publishers, libraries … and most importantly, our readers.
This campaign is sponsored by the Orland Free Library, Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library, and Library Renewal.
Posted by Jody (currently reading The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater)